Geometry of Gaussian free field sign clusters and random interlacements

Abstract

For a large class of amenable transient weighted graphs G, we prove that the sign clusters of the Gaussian free field on G fall into a regime of strong supercriticality, in which two infinite sign clusters dominate (one for each sign), and finite sign clusters are necessarily tiny, with overwhelming probability. Examples of graphs belonging to this class include regular lattices such as \({\mathbb {Z}}^d\), for \(d\ge 3\), but also more intricate geometries, such as Cayley graphs of suitably growing (finitely generated) non-Abelian groups, and cases in which random walks exhibit anomalous diffusive behavior, for instance various fractal graphs. As a consequence, we also show that the vacant set of random interlacements on these objects, introduced by Sznitman (Ann Math 171(3):2039–2087, 2010), and which is intimately linked to the free field, contains an infinite connected component at small intensities. In particular, this result settles an open problem from Sznitman (Invent Math 187(3):645–706, 2012).